It’s time to nail your colours to the mast!
1 Like
Make us!
I have a feeling this has a large potential to go very bad, and a small potential to maybe be good. I understand this is in the weeds, so continue, but if this goes bad it will get shut down quickly.
I personally consider American politics to be a choice between Syphilis and Amputation. Both are medical solutions, but they are very different, and in a game of “would you rather” I’m sure everyone has a preference. But really, neither one comes without its drawbacks.
5 Likes
An impossible discussion really outside of America. Politics and political spectrums differ from country to country.
To think of some recent leaders: Obama would have been an unelectable warmonger and a stooge for big business in the UK. David Cameron would have been an unelectable pinko in the USA.
But really what I see globally is a big polarisation happening. And it doesn’t breed harmony, In the UK you still can’t have a sensible, civil chat about Brexit in a pub. Start talking about the Middle East or Tommy Robinson and in most pubs the barman will tell you it’s time to go home. Not because he disagrees, but because he knows there’s an argument coming and that’s off putting for customers.
So I agree with @plonkster - there’s not much of an upside to this and potentially a rather large downside.
1 Like
That’s one reason I actually don’t understand why a South African would pick sides. Simply none of it really works here.
As a Christian man (there’s me nailing up some colours!), there is a lot about the identity politics of the Democrats that is extremely difficult to get past. Yes, we want as much freedom as possible, even if I live my life by different rules, but we were at that point where policing people’s speech was becoming a thing. And there I’m with Mr. Petersen, that’s a high right your tampering with. To give just one example.
Then there is the old “choice” debate. Again, not something that will turn out positive in most cases, but I think it is a fairly level-headed position to say that with what we know of human development… we really don’t need to push the lines any further than they are. Far over half of even democrats have ethical issues with this… but the party persists.
There is a reason so many young men voted for Trump. That’s something we always forget. Every new election, you have a new batch of young people that are now old enough to vote, and with a very square age profile to your population, this is more than just a few percent, this becomes the thing that decides elections. And the thing about young men is that they often have very little to lose. They can flip the chess board without a clear plan on the odds that when the pieces come down, the game could turn out better. So it is futile to rant about how Trump voters are “stupid”. Quite often they are not. They know the man is flawed. That is not the point.
Conversely, my main discontent with the Republicans is around the climate. Not only to they insist on dragging their feet again (just like Bush, but without the excuse of jet liners aimed at buildings), but they are actively working against some of the progress that has been made. While spouting stupid nonsense like this (money was allocated… not all of it was spent…).
So on balance, if I was forced to pick a side, I’d probably go with Syphilis this time. Because at some point you are going to run out of limbs to amputate.
and because it’s going to fall off soon anyway
2 Likes
During the last Trump term I had a discussion with an American whilst travelling. We both thought that the US would come to its senses and never elect the man again.
Alas we were both wrong!
I think that he’s divisive and not what the biggest economy in the free world needs.
That’s an important point. Let me add to that, that this goes for all large economies. Japan has the world’s fourth largest economy, for example. Japan has an aging population. This will affect us in the future.
So in a similar manner, my analogy of being forced to pick between two bad options is perhaps not far off. It will affect us, even if it happens in a land far far away.
Then, I am always reminded of the Dutch saying: De soep wordt niet zo heet gegeten, als ze wordt opgediend. Things tend to not be so bad as they seem at first.
Even if the king is an idiot, he probably has some officials (and several layers of democracy in this case) that does most of the work, and about half of those people are from the other side of the aisle.
(another lovely English word that is not pronounced as written, aisle, vs isle… being from the other side of the isle would be a bit further away. I digress).
[deleted by numbskull who decided to not post and then clicked the wrong button]
1 Like
Have one take on politics today … where are the new younger bloods?
Wait, they don’t have the money to get in the race, and stay. My bad.
So now we have the “old age home” running the show.
Today we have >75yo doing a job that requires extreme hours of focusing to be minora blade sharp at all times?
Or is this all a farce?
Biden passing his “medical” repeatedly as being “healthy”?
My Dad, 86 today, in his job, he will tell you you cannot keep up with mental work as you age. He had to fully retire at close to 80 after slowing down for years. He simply could not give legal opinions anymore as quick and accurate as he did in the past.
We need younger politicians and we need them yesterday.
The president is a bit of a “figure head” really. So it is a little bit of a farce.
1 Like
Is he though?
In SA, in the good old days, the President was really a ceremonial figure, and the PM wielded real power.
But Trump has been signing executive orders like there’s no tormorrow. I don’t want to comment on what he’s signed and what I think about what he’s signed, but he can clearly mobilise troops. He’s not just a figure head.
Indeed. The Dems in particular don’t have much in the way of young talent with broad enough appeal to win an election.
When Bill Clinton was elected back then I thought it a good thing. He was much younger than the two preceding presidents, and so, my reasoning went, he was more likely to reap what he sowed and thus would think more carefully.
But youth (or being no more than middle aged) is no guarantee: Nobody thought that Liz Truss was too old for the job, but look at how that worked out.
2 Likes
And “most” of his appointments haven’t been ratified by congress yet. Wait till when they get “let loose”… It’s going to be interesting.
1 Like
I agree, he does yield more power than just a figure head. But that is why the text “a (little) bit” appears twice in my post. Because to some extent, yes, he wields a lot of power. But then also, a lot of this is hot air and it only matters if it gets past the other more or less democratic levels of government.
I think the two main things he will do, or try to do, which I disagree with (in the spirit of this forum as well), is he will remove the tax credit on electric vehicles, and he will probably tamper with the 7.5 billion the Biden administration allocated for building more electrical charging stations.
When it comes to the tax credit, I try to look at this in the wider context. Of course a libertarian approach would say that we should just kick government out of all sectors that are being helped along with “the people’s money”, which would then also mean dropping all those oil subsidies. While this looks like a good way to handle it, and as a supporter of renewable energies I do think oil subsidies suck, I don’t think it is.
Government provides such subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives in order to steer things in a certain direction. Once it gets going, it is usually best if they get out of it and let the market run it. That is sort of what happened in Germany not too long ago: Incentives on EVs were dropped, the market took a bit of a beating, and then continued on its merry way.
So in a way, dropping the tax credit is probably not too bad. A big red flag as to where the man’s priorities lies, but ultimately not the worst thing. Manufacturers spent billions to make the production lines. They are not turning back. Pulling tax incentives will probably not stop the revolution.
Tampering with the building of EV charge stations (or “pausing disbursement of federal funding”), however, is a declaration of war. The money was allocated. It could have been left alone.
Then also pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.
As I said, it is Bush 2001 all over, without the excuse of a terrorist attack.
So, the CDC’s weekly report on morbidity and mortality has been published every week since the 60s, never skipping a week. Until this week. Also, he appointed Robert Kennedy as health secretary. The man who said (on Fox news) that there is a link between vaccines and autism, and then later had to quickly backpedal when people started asking if he also opposes the polio vaccine. The man who thinks Fluoride in water is a bad thing.
I know I was initially sceptic about how good it is to get too political about this, and now I’m one of the people who talk the most. If I overstep the line, tell me, I will self-sensor myself 
What I am saying, mostly, is that a lot of us are hugely concerned about what is going on in America. The old saying is that when America sneezes, the rest of the world gets a cold. They are the biggest economy. What is happening right now is very very scary.
2 Likes
Interesting times ahead, all this rolling back of the previous presidency “infatuations”.
The language used in these things is incredibly important. I mean, read this as an example.
In recent years, burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations have impeded the development of these resources.
There is actually no place for such loaded language in official documents. It is plain unprofessional. If I wrote something like that, even of a competitor, I’d be in big trouble.
More examples:
To eliminate the “electric vehicle (EV) mandate” and promote true consumer choice, which is essential for economic growth and innovation, by removing regulatory barriers to motor vehicle access; by ensuring a level regulatory playing field for consumer choice in vehicles; by terminating, where appropriate, state emissions waivers that function to limit sales of gasoline-powered automobiles; and by considering the elimination of unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that favor EVs over other technologies and effectively mandate their purchase by individuals, private businesses, and government entities alike by rendering other types of vehicles unaffordable;
And…
to ensure that the global effects of a rule, regulation, or action shall, whenever evaluated, be reported separately from its domestic costs and benefits, in order to promote sound regulatory decision making and prioritize the interests of the American people;
The implication being that in the past the decision making was unsound…
Sec. 7. Terminating the Green New Deal. (a) All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58),
What a mess.
Then… I don’t generally read white house documents. Maybe that’s just how all of them write.
Interesting times, at times scary, laying ahead “when America sneezes, the rest of the world gets a cold.”
Will see how things roll out over the next 100 days in office, and then the remainder of his last term.
There are many responsible people and others both inside and outside the US who are alarmed by these developments.
I’ve resigned myself to trusting these outfits to stymie Trump and his cohorts…
1 Like